


The End of Anything

by Mynameisdoubleg



Category: BattleTech: MechWarrior, Classic Battletech (Tabletop RPG)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29860245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mynameisdoubleg/pseuds/Mynameisdoubleg
Summary: The crew of an Explorer Corps ship looking for traces of the exodus road takes a break on Star's End, only to find the truce between ComStar and local pirates fraying under the temptation presented by their LosTech equipment.Most of my BattleTech stories tend to be a bit downbeat, so here's a little ray of sunshine. A happy ending! Miracles do happen.





	The End of Anything

_Shores of the Ecumene Sea_

_Star’s End_

_Independent World_

_10 January, 3045_

The truth was, Star’s End wasn’t at the end of anything.

The Milky Way was over 105,000 light years across, while the Star’s End system lay just 500 light years from Terra—barely 0.5% of the way across the galaxy. It wasn’t even at the edge of human-settled space: Within the coreward quarter of the galaxy alone, Oberon, Butte Hold and The Rock were all further from Terra, not to mention the rumored Deep Periphery states like the Hanseatic League.

It did feel like an end of another sort though: The bottom of the scale of human possibility. For anyone who had ever asked ‘How bad could life in the Periphery be?’ Star’s End was their answer. It could be _this_ bad. This was the end of the line, the black hole of human potential from which no light of civilization entered or escaped: a planet populated by scavengers, fugitives, bandits, pirates and marauders, barely even half-civilized even when they fled and settled here, and from that already low point, falling slowly, surely and steadily down below civilization’s event horizon, crushed into barbarism.

Killers, who’d sell one another for a drink, stab you in the back for a smoke. What point in looking for life out there, when you knew life back here was this barren?

Adept Delta/Epsilon IV Solomon Witt stood on the beach, skipping flat stones off the surface of the sea, off the edge of the planet it seemed. He’d unzipped his Explorer Corps overalls to the waist to give himself more freedom to move, though his sleeveless undershirt was too thin. It made him shiver, but it was good to feel something. Better than this numbing mission, this pointless search for something that didn’t exist.

The beach was a black band of coarse volcanic sand sheltering at the feet of knife-edged mountains. There was no moon, and thus no tides, but a biting cold wind drove the sea sloshing up the beach in regular, tireless rhythm.

Star’s End was a young world, in a young system still filled with belts of gas, rock and ice that had yet to coalesce into planets. The planet was an anomaly, the only one in the system, perhaps a wandering orphan captured by Star’s End’s sun, and wouldn’t it be fitting if even the Belt Pirates’ planet had been stolen from somewhere else?

Witt felt oddly floaty and detached from the ground in the planet’s 0.75G, a feeling not helped by the thin atmosphere that made him permanently light-headed. The stones flew impossibly fast and leaped almost comically high in the low gravity. Made him feel detached. Unreal.

Sand crunched behind him, and Witt sighed in irritation. “I came here to be alone,” he said, without turning around. Precentor Dupont and First Officer Wei were probably still drinking with the pirates who owned this planet, back at the tavern further up the beach, but Witt found all that false friendliness incredibly tiring. He crouched, searching the sand for another stone to throw.

A slim brown hand, holding a stone smooth as a hand grenade, appeared at the corner of his vision. Witt looked up, and discovered the hand belonged to one of the women from the bar, with challenging eyes and a narrow jaw set in a defiant line. Automatically, he sized her up. Looked for weapons at the waist, wrists, ankles. Finding none, Witt straightened, took the rock with a grunt of thanks.

“Cassandra Tripp,” she introduced herself. “You’re from the DropShip.”

Witt made a well-yeah face and wordlessly gestured to the ComStar logo on his undershirt, with its Greek Delta and Epsilon below the bearded star.

“Got a favor to ask.”

Witt’s shoulders slumped a little. Ah, this again. “No, you can’t come with us,” he said bluntly.

Cassandra’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “How’d you know I was going to ask?”

“People always do.” Witt waved an empty hand towards the pale sky. “Periphery folks are always looking for freedom and adventure. Well, let me tell you: There’s no adventure out there. There’s just a whole lot of nothing.”

Witt whipped the rock across the sea. It hurtled like a missile, became a black dot before it arced down, smacked off the surface and bounced up again. After that it was too faint to see, and he could only follow its progress from the rippled circles it left in the water, until they too vanished into nothing.

“Why do you think they stopped?” Cassandra asked when the rock had skipped out of sight. “Pretty much every world was settled six, seven hundred years ago. What happened? Why didn’t they keep going?”

“Lots of reasons,” Witt mused. “Maybe we finally realized all that’s out there is more of what’s down here.” He kicked the sand. Made tiny explosive detonations of black dirt at his feet. “Only what we brought with us.”

In five years of searching for traces of the Exodus fleet across a hundred parsecs of space, Witt had seen what the Periphery held: Warlords, bandits, pirates, tyrants and despots, would-be petty kings different from the Archons and Princes and Coordinators of the Inner Sphere only in the grubby scale of their ambitions. People incapable of collaboration and cooperation, spending all their energy tearing themselves apart. Just like the Belt Pirates, just like the rest of the Sphere. “Freedom and adventure? The fact is, Cassandra Tripp, you’re as free now as you’re ever going to be,” Witt concluded.

“I still want to go,” she replied stubbornly. “I’ve served on a DropShip, I won’t be dead weight.”

“Then serve on a DropShip. Plenty of those around.”

“It’s got to be you.”

“What’s so special about us?”

Cassandra took a deep breath. “I got it.”

“Got what?”

“The big C. Cancer. That’s the price of freedom. The price you pay for living in a place with thin air like Star’s End: Less ozone and more UV rays than you can shake a double helix at. Most of the crews spend all their time in space so they don’t got it so bad, but live too long down here and all that radiation will get to you eventually. All those greedy cells inside me goin’ haywire, gobbling up everything to make little copies of themselves.” Cassandra looked at him hard. “You people are my last hope. Tell me you’ve got something in that ship of yours, some Star League tech, something to make me better. I’ll do anything, work my ass off, anything.”

“Ah, hell.” Witt rubbed his jaw. The team’s JumpShip, the _Magellan_ -class _Now You See Me_ did have a Star League-quality medical facility, centuries ahead of anything these people had. There were no guarantees, but maybe, just maybe. But it wasn’t up to him, Precentor Dupont was in charge. And their mission was not a charity. “Look, I wish I could help you, really.”

Cassandra nodded sadly, and chewed her lip in thought. She looked back up the beach, towards the lakeside tavern. The building was more of a process than a finished product, with surfaces made of every building material imaginable (probably stolen from elsewhere, like everything the Belt Pirates owned), no two either parallel or perpendicular to one another. A messy, haphazard structure, each piece in competition with its neighbors for space and support. A battalion of vehicles was parked to one side—hover skimmers, torpedo-shaped jet sleds, ATVs, ground cars, a pair of motor-trikes with two front wheels, a Swift Wind with wheels almost as high as the roof, even what looked like a Darter scout car.

“About that,” Cassandra said slowly, turning back towards Witt and jerking a thumb towards the tavern. “Those guys your crewmates are drinking with now? They aren’t drinking with you folks because you’re so interesting or charming. I heard them talking—they just want to know when you plan to lift and what the flight path will be. They’re aiming to board your ship and then space the lot of you.”

Witt eyed the woman suspiciously. “Why would they do that?” he demanded. “ComStar expeditions must be the only normal contact you people have with the rest of the human race.”

“Yeah, well, guess people here aren’t comfortable depending on the kindness of others. As you just showed me, that’s not something you can really count on. They’d rather take what they can, trust only in their own strength.”

Witt wanted to accuse her of lying, of trying to scare him into taking her on board, but the plan sounded all too believable. While the threat of interdiction kept the Great Houses in line, out here in the Periphery ComStar had to bribe the locals with technology, medicines and supplies, relying on old-fashioned self-interest to protect their neutrality. It didn’t always work. People were often incapable of cooperation and collaboration, acting like cancer cells, eating away at the body that supported them in their reckless greed.

“An ambush, then. When and where?” he asked, grimly resigned.

“Ah, well now, that would be telling.” Cassandra shrugged her slight shoulders. “Help a girl out?”

“Quid pro quo when your friends are planning on murdering us? Unity woman, this is my life we’re talking about.”

“Mine too,” she shot back. “Guess you’ll be a little more motivated to make a trade.”

Still, Witt hesitated. He should say no. Or play along until he learned the pirates’ plan and then dump the woman. But. Wasn’t that the attitude he saw tearing apart the Periphery, even the whole human galaxy? Wouldn’t that make him just another greedy cancer cell? “I’ll talk to the Precentor, but I can’t promise you anything,” he said at last. “Now, this ambush: When and where? What forces, how many men?”

Cassandra shook her head. “No deal. When we’re both on board your ship and I’m looking over my ass at this planet eating my dust.” She nodded towards the tavern. “I’d get your friends, if I were you. The longer they spend there, the more temptation to forget the plan and just try to grab you as hostages. And folks around here aren’t noted for their self-restraint.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. It was about 20 kilometers of rough and twisting road from the town to the spaceport, where their _Mule_ -class freighter, the _Kick Like A_ , was grounded. Too far in what, in light of this woman’s words, now felt like enemy territory. Get everyone back to the DropShip, figure their next move from there. “It’s a thought,” Witt told Cassandra, working his arms back into his jumpsuit and pulling up the zipper. “Come on.”

Witt strode back up the beach as fast as he could without winding himself, Cassandra easily keeping pace next to him. Growing up with the thin air of Star’s End was like training for a marathon every day of your life. As they drew closer, Witt noted with unease that many of the vehicles were armed. The Darter had a six-barrel minigun in an open-ring turret, two of the jet sleds had machineguns bolted under their noses, and there was a jeep with another machinegun on a pintle mount behind the driver. The rented ground car Witt and the Precentor had come in suddenly looked very fragile.

“One of these yours?” Witt waved at the vehicles.

“I can get us a ride.”

That wasn’t a ‘Yes’, Witt noted, but there was no time to argue. “Fine. I’ll be back soon,” he said over his shoulder, and pushed the tavern door open.

The inside was as shambolic as the outside. Tables and chairs of every size, color, shape and material were scattered about the large common room. Trophies from pirate raids were hung, hammered or bolted to the walls: A Combine _daisho_ set of long and short samurai swords, a tattered Oberon Confederation flag, a dark green silk Sanglamore sash, still crusted with blood.

There were about three dozen locals inside, from four different Belt Pirate gangs that Witt could identify: The Scarlett Fever, Blackstar’s Bandits, the Silent Swarm and the Spacer Invasion. At a table against the far wall, Precentor Dupont sat, grinning and nodding, between Fabius “Fever” Scarlett and Tenacious Blackstar. Scarlett was wiry, shaven-headed and covered in piebald patches of rough, red skin that he scratched constantly. Blackstar was stockier, had a thick beard down to his chest and an eyepatch over either the left or right eye, depending on his mood. First Officer Wei’s head was tipped back against the wall, his eyes closed and mouth hanging open, snoring noisily.

As he moved towards the Precentor, Witt scanned the room with razor-wire caution. Dozens of eyes watched him back, still smiling as they had before he’d left for the beach, but now he detected an undercurrent of amusement and disdain. There were a lot of knives, what looked like a gel baton gun, and Scarlett had a neural lash looped at his waist—a nasty kind of whip that delivered a powerful shock to anything it coiled about. Blackstar wasn’t obviously armed, but could probably have hidden an arsenal in his voluminous jacket.

“Precentor,” Witt said as he approached the table. “If I might have a word in private?”

As Scarlett and Blackstar exchanged glances, Dupont looked up, smiling blissfully wide. “Ah, Witt m’boy, I’ze just been improving relations with the locals. Fever, Blockstone, this is my Delta-Epsilon, don’t you know, my security officer. Witt, where’ve you been?”

“Skipping stones,” said Witt, reaching over to Wei, getting the man’s waist over his shoulder and then lifting him out of the chair with a grunt of effort, glad for once of the light gravity.

Dupont waggled a you-can’t-fool-me finger at Witt. “Stones can’t skip.”

“Not without help, no sir.” Witt took hold of the hand the waggling finger was attached to, and used it to jerk the Precentor to his feet. “Not unlike you and horizontal locomotion. Your pardon, gentlemen.”

“I think your pal ain’t done here,” said Scarlett, nodding to someone behind Witt.

“Siddown, relax my friend,” agreed Blackstar. “Tell us all about your travels.”

Witt turned and found a man blocking his path, almost albino-pale, with a cruel smile and a recurved kukri dagger in a sheath at his hip. Still smiling, the man put a hand on Witt’s chest and gave him a slight shove, trying to throw him off balance. Witt twisted aside, let the man’s palm thrust carry him stumbling forward with a yowl while Witt grabbed the kukri and yanked it from its sheath.

“Whazzappen—” Wei spoke from over Witt’s shoulder, awoken by the sudden jerk of motion.

Blackstar shouted something. The man with the baton gun was on his feet now, raising his gun to fire at point-blank range. Witt twisted again as the man fired, felt the shock as the gel baton thumped into the Wei’s semi-comatose form, promptly cutting off the First Officer’s half-formed question with a grunt.

“Come on!” Witt bellowed to the Percentor and lunged for the door. A hand reached out to grab for him, and Witt sliced down with the kukri, leaving a mangled stump and a man screaming in shock, disbelieving eyes watching blood pumping from his wrist.

Witt crashed through the door, the Precentor stumbling in his wake. Witt’s eyes swept the bikes, sleds and cars parked outside. The woman, where was the woman? Had she betrayed them? Was this all a setup, some byzantine plan within plan, part of the internecine squabbles among pirate bands?

“Up here.” Cassandra leaned out the open window of the Darter scout car, slapping its armored side with one hand to get his attention.

“I say Witt, do you mind explaining—” Dupont began.

“Later. Into the vehicle, sir.”

“Really, Witt, this is instant, er, instrumention, ah, insubor—”

They were almost at the scout car when Witt heard the door crash open behind him, the air filling with a babble of angry, urgent voices. A single gunshot rang out and something buzzed past Witt like an aerospace engine, then pinged angrily off the scout car’s armor.

“They shot at me, Witt!” Dupont yelled.

“Aware sir. Move!” Witt dropped the knife and yanked the passenger side door open, dumped Wei onto the floor and then shoved the Precentor in after. Witt turned, saw a score of armed men swarming from the tavern, led by Scarlett and Blackstar.

“At _me_ , Witt!”

Behind him, the Darter’s turret whirred, the minigun swung around, and then loosed a spitting, hissing burst of gunfire over the men’s heads. Sparks burst like fireworks as the tavern’s roof was punctured in a hundred places, and the men threw themselves to the ground.

“Shot at me, Witt! Me!”

Witt slammed the scout car door shut and clambered up the side of Darter and into the turret ring. “Go, go, go!” he yelled to Cassandra. “Switch the turret to manual, I’ll fire, you just drive!”

“They can’t shoot at me! I’m the Precentor!”

With a lurch the Darter jerked forward, slamming Witt’s hip painfully against the turret ring’s edge, then the tires gripped and the Darter lunged for the road, smashing aside the Precentor’s rented ground car and a light cargo truck like a wrecking ball through plywood, still accelerating.

The road from town to spaceport was barely worthy of the name, a stretch of packed-down earth that twisted and wove among boulder fields and hacked-off clusters of hexagonal basalt columns. Witt found the turret controls, and swung the turret around. He noted with irritation the Darter’s cargo area formed a high hump at the back, creating a blind spot in the firing arc and preventing the turret from being aimed directly rearward.

“Dupont, call the DropShip,” Witt called down to the Precentor. “Let them know we’re coming. And tell them to warm up the insurance package.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Dupont moaned.

“Then do it in the back,” Cassandra told Dupont, then louder to Witt: “Get ready, they’re coming after us.”

Witt peered back, and saw a chaotic swarm of vehicles emerge from the comet-tail of dust the scout car was kicking up. A pair of jet sleds came shooting out of the haze, sleek as bullets, then ATVs, three-wheeled bikes with riders clinging to the back, ground cars with men leaning out the windows, the machinegun-armed jeep and the Swift Wind. Witt twisted, tried to track the jet sleds, but too slow, the gun wouldn’t turn fast enough and the chattering burst he fired at them only kicked up excited gouts of earth.

The armor about Witt sparked and sang as the jeep’s gunner fired back. Witt swung the minigun, fired again, barrels blurring as they spun, bullets chewing through the jeep’s hood, glass, tearing bloodily through the exposed gunner in the back. The jeep swerved, hit a boulder, flipped onto its side and slid, throwing up a bow wave of dirt until it careened to a stop.

Hot brass tumbled into the crew compartment, on top of Wei’s comatose form, startling the First Officer into consciousness with a garbled shriek. Wei flailed about until Dupont hauled him into a sitting position.

The two bikes were close, too close, but as Witt tried to track them they pulled directly behind the Darter, into the scout car’s blind spot. There was a thud from the rear, then a gloved hand appeared over the Darter’s hump, clinging limpet-like to the armor, followed by a helmet and grey mask, then Scarlett’s red-mottled face appeared beside the first man. The masked man slithered up onto the roof. In his hand was the slim grey canister of a grenade.

Witt cursed and reached for the kukri he’d taken from the tavern, but his hand closed on air. Frack, he’d dropped it when he’d pulled the Precentor into the car. “Weapon!” he yelled desperately, turning just in time to see the two jet sleds pull ahead of the Darter, then spin 180 degrees so they were roaring straight back towards the scout car, machineguns under their noses hammering, chipping away at the Darter’s front.

Cassandra swore, jerked the steering wheel, slewed the Darter to one side. One sled veered away, but the second misjudged, slid into the Darter’s path, hit with a spine-cracking crunch and then was thrown pirouetting away. Dupont, still bent over Wei, was thrown backward, colliding with Witt’s legs. Witt lost his grip on the turret controls and fell crashing into the crew compartment.

A shadow blocked the light from the open turret ring. Something long and grey came spinning down, bounced once and landed in Wei’s lap. Wei blinked at it stupidly for a second as Witt and Dupont, still tangled in a heap below the turret, screamed at him to throw it away. With a shrug and an underarm throw, Wei hurled the cylinder back up and out of the turret ring.

The grenade detonated. It was a flashbang, a stun grenade meant to concuss, not kill, more light and sound than explosive force, but it went off less than half a meter in front of the masked man’s face. A thunderous boom, loud as a DropShip engine at takeoff and a blast of light like a miniature sun swatted the man off the back of the scout car. He fell into the path of the Swift Wind and disappeared beneath the tires.

Witt gave the First Officer a thumbs up, and clambered back into the turret.

The crackling line of Fabius Scarlett’s neural lash curled around Witt’s arm. The pain was instant and total, as though every cell in his body was being stretched in every direction at once. His body twisted and convulsed under the searing, lacerating current that sent jolt after jolt of pain. Through the haze, Witt was dimly aware of Precentor Dupont grabbing his legs, trying to haul him back into the crew compartment, but Scarlett’s lash held too tight. The only thing Witt could see was Scarlett’s face, leering with twisted pleasure.

“Take the wheel,” Cassandra barked to Dupont, then threw open the driver’s door.

“I don’t know how to drive!” Dupont protested, but Cassandra was squirming out of the driver’s seat and scrabbling up onto the roof.

Another jolt coursed through Witt’s body, tearing a scream from his raw throat. Scarlett chuckled, gave the neural lash a twist, dragging Witt out of the turret ring and up onto the car roof. Scarlett looped the lash about Witt’s neck, then held the activation stud in front of Witt’s face. With his free hand, Scarlett waved a mocking ‘bye-bye.’

A heel slammed into Scarlett’s nose and he reeled back, lost his footing on the edge of the car, then went over the side with a yelp. Witt blinked through the pain and found Cassandra crouched over him, gingerly unwinding the lash while keeping her balance, careful not to touch the activation stud.

Witt tried to thank her, but his mouth and tongue had not forgiven his brain yet, and all that came out was a slurred mishmash of syllables, torn away by the wind. Cassandra smiled and nodded anyway.

A flurry of laser fire burst around them. The Swift Wind had pulled alongside, and a black figure in the rear seat squeezed off another pulsating burst at them. The Darter’s armor sparkled, white-hot blisters erupting everywhere the shots landed. In the driver’s seat, Dupont leaned out, tried to pull the driver’s door closed again. In that instant, the wheel spun, throwing the Darter to the side.

Cassandra was thrown off her feet, went sliding for the edge.

Witt reached for her, but his muscles were still twitchy, balky, his fingers half-numb, and her hand slipped through his. Her feet, then legs tipped over the side of the Darter.

Then Wei was beside him, grabbing onto Cassandra’s arms, holding her fast.

Cassandra gasped in relief. Witt felt giddy, thought he might burst out laughing. He pounded Wei on the back in delight.

A pencil line of green fire lanced through Wei’s left eye. His head snapped back, then lolled forward, slack, smacking forehead-first against the deck armor, arms going limp. Letting go of Cassandra. And she was gone.

Witt scrambled for the turret, possessed of sudden and total fury. He got to the gun controls, spun the turret around and raked a burst along the length of the Swift Wind. It swerved away. Witt’s fingers were locked about the firing studs, though, sweeping a line of death through the pursuing vehicles, blowing riders off ATVs, punching through ground cars and trucks until the Darter broke free, pirates falling further and further behind.

“Turn back,” Witt told Dupont. “We have to turn back, get the girl.”

“I can’t Witt, I can’t,” Dupont protested. “She’s dead, Witt, it’s hopeless and we’re getting out of here.”

Witt looked back, face stone, eyes diamond. “Not hopeless, sir,” he said. “We’ve still got insurance.”

Twenty minutes later, the pirates had drawn up in a wide ring around the DropShip. The surviving vehicles from the tavern had been joined by a collection of more militarized machines—scout cars, PPC or LRM-armed weapons carriers, a flatbed truck with a quad autocannon bolted on its back. They hesitated, just out of range of the DropShip’s guns, ready to attack if it showed any signs of preparing to lift off, but unwilling to risk being the first into the line of fire.

Cassandra, covered in cuts, bruises and scrapes from ankle to neck, huddled on the floor in the back of Blackstar’s Swift Wind, knees against her chest. Tenacious Blackstar sat opposite, his face a picture of almost saintly restraint and understanding.

“You’re lucky to be alive my dear,” said Blackstar. In his right paw, he held a long pulse laser pistol and waved its barrel towards her face. “Whether that’s a blessing or curse depends on how the next few minutes go.” He nodded towards the silent bulk of the DropShip.

“No way you’re cracking that egg,” predicted Cassandra.

“Oh, I don’t know, Cassie,” Blackstar said breezily, scratching the skin under his eyepatch, currently over the left eye. “Not all is lost. I don’t think they’ll risk damage to their ship if they think they can buy us off. All comes down to self-interest in the end.”

“That’s the sound of a man counting his unhatched chickens.”

The pirate just grinned. “I just know people,” he said. “You wait and see.”

There was a high-pitched peal of static from the DropShip, and then a loudspeaker voice boomed out across the ferrocrete: “Alright, we’re coming out to negotiate. Don’t shoot.” At the base of the ship, one of the cargo doors began to lower, hydraulics chugging greasily.

Blackstar looked down at Cassandra, gave her a self-satisfied look that said ‘See?’ and tried to wink with his left eye, remembered the eyepatch, tried again with the right.

Something appeared at the top of the cargo ramp. Painted brilliant white, ten meters tall, with backward-canting raptor legs, long gibbon arms ending in metal clamshell claws and a sleek, almost aerodyne body. The words ‘T-CELL’ were stenciled in black along the side. It strode down the ramp, set foot upon the ferrocrete, and Cassandra could feel the tremors from its footfalls through the floor of the Swift Wind.

“Okay, here’s our offer,” said a voice from the colossus. “You all piss off, and I’ll think about not vaporizing you.” The claws snapped open, revealing the long barrels of a pair of heavy lasers.

Blackstar’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “Fire!” he yelled when he found his voice, “what are you malking idiots waiting for? Fire! Fire!” He turned back to Cassandra. “As for you—”

Cassandra lashed out, her foot catching him in the stomach, making him double over, sucking for breath. She jammed a finger into his one visible eye, then grappled for the gun as he screamed. The two tumbled from the door of the Swift Wind. The pistol jarred free, going skittering across the ferrocrete. Blackstar found his feet first.

The quad autocannon cut loose over their heads, all four barrels thudding away, making the truck bed rock from side to side. Shells cratered the side of the BattleMech. Brilliant, blinding light flashed from its arms and swept across the ring of vehicles. Each flicker lasted only a second or two, but it was enough to slice through the autocannon mount, the truck bed below, the fuel tank, blasting it into a sudden pulse of fire and flame.

Blackstar stooped for the pulse pistol, scooped it up and whirled around, finger on the trigger.

A hover weapons carrier with a missile launcher loosed a screaming salvo at the BattleMech. Thick contrails leaped across the ferrocrete and slammed into the machine, detonating in flashbulb bursts of flame, obscuring the ’Mech in clouds of smoke. The weapons crew cheered.

“That’s the price you pay for being a hero,” Blackstar told Cassandra with a grin.

A shadow moved within the smoke. A pillar of green light blasted out, coring the carrier lengthwise from nose to rear, blowing it to a cloud of shrapnel and debris.

Blackstar was thrown forward by the shockwave, landing on his knees, and when he looked up, he found Cassandra there with the pistol in her hands. The pulse of her laser fire was a tiny flicker, lost among the annihilation around her.

The Mech strode free of the haze, lasers sweeping left and right, slicing through skimmers and cars and bikes like fire through a summer forest. The launch pad was ringed in flames and echoed with the secondary detonations of ammunition and fuel tanks. The survivors fled.

Witt found Cassandra standing over Blackstar’s body, pistol dangling negligently from her hand.

“You made it!” he shouted happily. “Can I offer you a ride? A little more comfortable this time.”

Cassandra laughed, pushed sweaty, smoke-stained hair out of her face. “Sure,” she yelled up at the BattleMech, “just let me pack my stuff.” She glanced around. “Okay I’m ready.”

Witt grinned and unrolled the Mech’s chain-link ladder down to the ferrocrete. He suspected that strange feeling as he watched her clamber up might be, what, hope? After years of searching the Periphery, he’d finally found something. This wasn’t the end of anything—but it might be the start of something.


End file.
